With onions, if you start them from seeds, you need to buy new seeds every year. Onion seeds have a very high failure rate, this applies to green onions / scallions as well as the larger onions like whites, yellows or reds (all of which you can buy as sets aka small bulbs which usually do better than seeds) With cucumbers, they’re a warmer weather later in the season seed/planting so it might be smarter to either start them yourself in a green house then transplant any seedlings to the garden and/or buy seedlings from someone who did the work of sprouting the seeds for you & plant those instead. If you have a seedling kit with a heat mat, so much the better. I would also start tomatoes & peppers this way or buy seedlings already sprouted & ready for transplanting. I’m not a big enough fan of sweet corn to bother planting it myself, it takes up a lot of space in a garden plus it often has lots of issues with pests (bugs, worms, gophers, racoons) & other diseases like smut/fungus. It’s something I just buy from others locally who are better at growing it than I am & since it’s not my favorite, it’s not a must-grow myself thing. Generally you want to keep your stored seeds cool, out of the light & at the right moisture levels. I don’t know that the prepper/survival seed vaults are any better at extending the life of your seeds than seeds you buy & store carefully yourself, I’ve never tried them out. There are great books on seed saving & preserving worth investing in if you are seriously gardening. I have a stove top Presto pressure canner I love, but it’s cool to see there’s also an electric version out there to try now. I’ve hacked an electric turkey fryer to use as a waterbath canner, it works brilliantly for tomatoes & high acid pickles, I can process more jars at a time than in my stove top waterbath canner.

Monitoring sites like STATNews & Kaiser Health News, there is some pretty good medical journalism there especially their COVID-19 coverage. They are doing great coverage of all the vaccine trials and the other treatments & therapies. Frankly there aren’t a lot of effective antivirals out there for other virus types, the cocktails for HIV/AIDS being an exception though it took a heck of a long time to get there & a lot of people died before that cocktail was developed. There’s Tamiflu for Type A influenza (nothing for Type B flu strains) but it needs to be taken within the 1st 72 hours of developing symptoms & even then what it generally does is decrease a patient’s recovery time by a couple days at most. It seems as if remdesivir where it works is acting like Tamiflu, just shortening the course of illness a bit & again it’s got to be given at the right time to make a difference (to people who are moderately ill, they may be in the hospital, but they aren’t bad off enough to need to be on a respirator, though they may have low blood oxygen) which is why an earlier smaller study may have conflicting results with the WHO’s pronouncement that remdesivir is not something they find to significantly reduce mortality (if you give remdesivir to someone with severe COVID it doesn’t seem to prevent their deaths). Gilead’s remdesivir shows some benefit in patients with moderate Covid-19, new data show New data on Gilead’s remdesivir, released by accident, show no benefit for coronavirus patients. Company still sees reason for hope Dexamethasone is not an antiviral but an immune system down regulator. It can slow down a ‘cytokine storm’ (an oversimplified explanation is that cytokines exponentially ramp up an immune response but the tissue damage done by everything the cytokines recruit to fight the viral infection is highly non-specific & indiscriminate) that would result in a lot of unnecessary damage to the lungs, it is widely theorized that these cytokine storms were what killed a lot of young people (ages 20-40) who contracted the 1918 H1N1 / ‘Spanish flu’ in the 1918-1920 pandemic, these poor people often got pulmonary edema or fluid from the destroyed lung cells leaking into where the air in their lungs should be & they literally drowned in their own fluids, a truly terrible way to die. Watch: Understanding dexamethasone, the steroid used to treat Trump’s Covid-19 But there can be too much of a good thing in dexamethasone treatment it can overly dampen an immune response and it’s probably also got an optimal window for when it should be administered (I doubt that’s been well studied even anecdotally yet). The thing about a novel virus is it’s just that: a new thing. For a virologist (or an ex-virologist like me, my areas of study were influenza & rhinoviruses the virus type that most commonly causes the ‘common cold’) one can geek out on this endlessly, but as a fellow human, it’s truly humbling & disturbing to consider just how deadly this virus can be when it gets into a particularly susceptible host aka a fellow human being who can’t predict at all just how severe their experience of infection will be. Basically my thinking on SARS-Cov2 & COVID-19 keeps looping back to this: put off getting infected with this for as long as you possibly can for the reasons laid out in this article from The Atlantic (basically you don’t want to be a clinical guinea pig of a patient). We know more about the virus now than we did say 9 months ago, but the phenomenon of the long haulers (those struggling to recover from a COVID-19 infection) should be enough to scare you, not just those who contract ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) & die or come as close as possible to it or to those who get either MIS-C (multi-inflammatory syndrome in children) or MIS-A (multi-inflammatory syndrome in adults). https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/its-still-better-to-put-off-getting-covid-19/616919/ Good books on the 1918 flu pandemic will tell you that that specific strain of H1N1 shortened a lot of lives, people died years earlier than they might have due to heart & lung problems they contracted along with their flu infection. The same was true of people who got what was once called GRID (gay-related immune disease, later to become AIDS then HIV-AIDS) in the early 1980s, they developed rare microbial infections & cancers as the virus destroyed their immune systems (it literally infects T cells & T cells mediate B cells, the cells you need to produce an antibody response to an infectious microbe). This might also prove true for people who are the unfortunate ones who got sick with COVID-19 before almost everyone, we just don’t know how their health will be over the longer term. Healthy food consumption is more of USDA’s department at the federal level (they run SNAP/food stamps among other things, the current Ag Secretary is also connected to Big Ag (Perdue of Perdue poultry & meats), he’s got scandals developing around him, it’s not in his interest or big corporate agriculture companies to get people eating better and/or losing weight, not that NIH hasn’t done research into obesity etc, it’s just their work bumps up against the interests of Big Medicine & Big Pharma. There’s a far bigger revolving door regulatory problem between USDA & big corporate agriculture than there historically has been between NIH which is mostly career research scientists & M.D.s like Tony Fauci, the revolving door problem for medicine & medical research is at the FDA, where people interested in Big Pharma cycle back & forth between the FDA & their industry & set a lot of the standards for drug research approvals. The CDC also has a lot of career research scientists (the best of the best in epidemiologists), but as they’ve been neutered by the current executive, they are extremely confounded by the extensive politicization of their work https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc I do see an interesting thing happening right now with the Coronavirus Task Force members described here: https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-pandemics-virus-outbreak-public-health-12a2015d9bb85cf13f2debcf85fb35d5 Dr. Fauci in particular is showing up & doing a lot of online interviews regardless of what the current president (& vice president) want him to do (I watched one on YouTube a few days ago that was put out by an editor at the prestigious journal JAMA, it was quite useful). Dr Birx has been going to the individual states to help them do better with pandemic responses at the state level & Admiral Giroir is stumping for the  “3W’s” — watching your distance from others, wearing a mask & frequently washing your hands. I doubt this serves the reelection goals of the president, but their actions are in service of the American public if not the White House.

If it’s FedEx never use them if you live rural. I’ve had them throw sensitive documents (with which anyone could commit identity fraud) at dusk into a snowbank with little more than a flimsy plastic bag around the cardboard envelope PRE-PANDEMIC (reason stated: they were scared to drive up the plowed driveway & get stuck when there was no ice or snow on it at all, real reason: they’re underpaid & overscheduled) and I had to risk an accident to retrieve them. Over a decade, I’ve had to call my closest FedEx office (90 minutes drive one way away from me) at least half a dozen times to complain about their delivery disasters (their drivers will see you outside your house but rather than wait for you to walk to meet them at the door they choose to deliver to, instead they scribble out & hastily leave a ‘couldn’t deliver this’ tag & speed off if they’re behind schedule, 3 times of this & you have to drive to the FedEx facility to pick up your package or it disappears.) FedEx truly sucked always out here in my part of Virginia. UPS is doing the best job in the pandemic.. I’ve had packages delivered craptastic FedEx style & some have been sent back after only 3 days to their senders (2 of whom were in France, only one of whom got it back & worked out reshipping it to me, the other one is missing, the USPS used to hold not delivered packages longer than 72 hours, 48 of which they were closed to me for pickup because it was over a Saturday which is now a day of 100% closure & Sunday). And people depend on services like Express Scripts (especially veterans) which uses USPS for the timely safe & reliable delivery of their prescription medicines (that’s how the VA & Tricare, the military version of Medicare, roll, they had no idea USPS was going to deliberately do this to thousands of vulnerable vets). At least Japan Post recently resumed airmail service to the USA (it’s standard SAL which means it’s not trackable or registered). It takes the usual month or so. Japan Post’s Express Mail Service is still not delivering to the USA.

If you really want a Berkey, do scout around on their website, there are times where they sometimes have scratch & dent kits (cosmetic scrapes, scratches &/or dings/dents to either the plastic (the Berkey Light model) or stainless steel containers) in stock. Often around Black Friday those in stock scratch & dent units are heavily discounted as well as the 100% cosmetically unblemished Berkeys (though unblemished costs more). If you can tolerate cosmetic imperfections you can save a lot of $ on a Berkey. https://www.berkeyfilters.com/collections/scratch-and-dent You can also buy parts from Berkey to make your own budget version with the ubiquitous pair of identically sized cheap food grade plastic buckets but the filter guts are Berkey filters and yes they also stock spigots, etc. https://www.berkeyfilters.com/collections/berkey-parts-and-accessories I bought my 1st Berkey used on FeeBay some years ago (It has the older British Berkefeld label on the stainless steel container, it was lightly used, not abused, by it’s previous owner, it just needed new ceramic filter cartridges, as my first Berkey was for tap water from a well which is ‘hard’ & slightly rusty but not nasty tasting, I skipped buying their charcoal filters which only address taste issues & I don’t need the fluoride removing filters because the well water isn’t fluoridated). Later I bought extra filters for it, then I upgraded it’s spigot from a plastic to a stainless steel one (those are stocked on the Berkey website & I got mine on sale for less than $10, you can order spare parts like spigots, those wingnuts & gaskets/washers that attach the filters in in leak-free fashion, a filter primer, a cleaning kit, etc) & stash those away as well for nominal money for future maintenance & repairs. On one of the many Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales, I bought a 2nd similar sized stainless steel Berkey for a back-up, it came with some nifty bonuses in that sale so as that big shopping day is coming up again, you may want to check their site for deals Also to occasionally clean the ceramic Berkey filters you can use a *non-scratch* Scotch Brite sponge (Costco stocks bulk packages of these cheap, I stock up when they go on sale they are blue & white, it’s the type of sponge included in a Berkey cleaning or maintenance kit) and *lightly* scrub the surface with the abrasive side of the sponge (just use water, no soap). I keep this sponge sealed in a Ziploc bag, labelled as the sponge to only be used on the Berkey filter cartridges, so that it doesn’t get used for anything else & no one puts cleaning chemicals or soap on it (plus it doesn’t get moldy or nasty that way).

When I was doing influenza pandemic preparation ~10 years ago (I got H1N1 flu when it went around in 2009-10, not fun, I became a pandemic prepper after this, then I had a still living parent with dementia to care for & I was it for his caregiving, also not a good situation) I went to the safety & protection gear section of either Lowes or Home Depot (I forget which) & bought 2 face shields (suitable for using in a home woodshop, maybe for doing some light metalworking as well) for ~$15 each. I think AO Safety is no longer making these, but they look a lot like this model (extends down well below my chin, ends about halfway down the length of my neck, covers back to both ears, the cap-like partial helmet covers part of the top of my head as well as my entire forehead, it adjusts like a baseball cap at the back & also to a lesser degree at the top, has a very strong polycarbonate plastic clear shield piece that can be replaced if broken): https://www.grainger.com/product/AO-SAFETY-Faceshield-Visor-for-Headgear-8UK71 Back in 2009-10, people in the know about flu pandemic preparedness were also buying (non-sterile, non medical grade) N95 respirators in the paint or protective gear sections of big box hardware stores, but also back then as there were Tamiflu shortages & other issues, the stocks on the N95s would run out or low from time to time. This was definitely a preparedness problem then as well. Remembering that back during the earliest days of the HIV-AIDS pandemic in the 1980s & 1990s, surgeons & surgical teams would wear plastic face shields (they were worried about potentilly virus-infected blood splashing them in the face, i.e. eyes, nose & mouth, though a sterile surgical mask at least covers the last 2), that was when I chose to grab a few face shields for future flu pandemics (well at least I got the respiratory part right, global out of control coronavirus pandemic, who knew?). Having the face shield on is *excellent* protection for droplets, less so for aerosols though larger aerosols tend to either sink or hit the face shield & not your face first, it would take some unusual airflow to go down under the bottom end of a sufficiently long face shield & drift up to reach your mouth nose or eyes. My faceshield covering so much of my face & beyond would really make it hard to get infected, but you can add a fabric nose & mouth covering, a surgical mask or a N95 respirator if you have one for far more protection for yourself. With just the fabric covering over your nose & mouth, you are more protecting others than yourself & if they cough or sneeze on it, well, yikes! What a face shield gives you is the critical EYE protection. Glasses or sunglasses do this a bit, SAFETY glasses or goggles, do this better, but again they don’t cover nearly as much of your face as a face shield would. And that plastic is impervious to virus sized particles (though it is harder to breathe behind, they can get humid & foggy) Even an N95 allows some permeability & they can’t be cleaned or disinfected or reused forever (they were designed to be only for single use protection, I’m so nervous for the health care professionals who are reusing N95s, to me that’s unnecessarily crazy risky, but here we are, sigh.) When I was studying for my PhD in an influenza lab, the big thing I had to become aware of is how much people touch their faces around or near their *eyes* (to rub them, to scratch an itch). If you try to touch your eyes & you have a faceshield, safety glasses (they wrap a bit around the sides of your face in the eye area) or safety goggles on, you touch plastic before you touch your infection-vulnerable eyes. It smudges the clear plastic but no virions (virus particles) get through the plastic. And I can drink from a straw (have tested this, works fine, you have to hold the cup lower than usual & not bump a straw against the outer surface of the face shield bringing it up to your mouth which like the outer surface of any face covering you should assume is virus exposed & infectious) & possibly eat with a faceshield still on (not with a mask or other cloth face covering on though, that’s impossible) Anyway my only issue with my faceshield is that it scrapes/chafes a bit across my forehead but I’m going to experiment with putting moleskin on the hard plastic strap that comes into contace with my forehead it to reduce the forehead scratching/chafing. Moleskin has a sticky side that could be adhered & then peeled off the hard plastic forehead band & replaced when I need to deep clean the face shield. I just need to remember to keep Windex & paper towels in my car (more to clean off fingerprints than to disinfect the face shield) so I can see better (I need reading glasses for fine print when grocery shopping etc, it’s a bit awkward for face shield use, but manageable) I really like the EYE protection of the face shield which is something even an N95 doesn’t take into consideration.

CIDRAP & Osterholm have been aces in infectious diseases for ages. If you want to know about pediatric issues & respiratory viruses Dr. Bill Schafner at Vanderbilt is *the* guy (I can’t recall offhand if he’s just an MD or an MD/PhD, he was great whenever he came to the Flu Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, an excellent clinician as well as a researcher). Dr. Peter Hotez (also at BCM) also knows his stuff though he’s more a molecular virology guy than an epidemiologist (Dr. Ashish Jha is quite good on epidemiology, I love that he’s very no BS’ing, he calls it like he sees it). And Dr David Grabowski of Harvard is the guy I trust to understand how screwed up nursing homes & similar facilities are (they were so long before COVID-19, now they are orders of magnitude more horrific) though he’s more health care policy than basic or medical research. Anything Tony Fauci does is pretty solid though he’s more of an expert in retroviruses, T-cell immunity & HIV/AIDS, he is literally *battle tested & hardened* in global viral pandemics (you would have thought we would have learned much more from those experiences in the 1980s & 1990s but we didn’t) The former head of the National Strategic Stockpile, Greg Burel (@gburel on Twitter, he retired in January of 2020) is definitely worth listening to on national preparedness & how we blew this one big time: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/04/16/strategic-national-stockpile-burel

Anything with a lot of linen in it is going to wrinkle like crazy & you’re going to look rumpled unless you iron it constantly and/or starch the heck out of it. Ramie is commonly blended in with linen to try to solve the wrinkling issue (very common to see women’s nicer summer clothing in linen / ramie blends). Both are pretty breathable & lightweight but not as durable as either plain wool or a wool blend. Silk does breathe well, it can be made into winter underwear (lots of serious skiiers invest in 100% silk long johns) but it is high maintenance around cleaning & can retain odors. I’ve not seen a lot of silk / wool blend fabrics out there in men’s clothing, I don’t know if that’s because they’re harder to make in the first place or they’re harder to maintain. I’ve seen silk/wool blends in women’s business suiting, but they’re inevitably ‘dry clean only’ & some fabrics you can ruin if you do anything but dry clean them. Polyester is pretty low maintenance / easy care even if it has an ‘icky’ non-breathable hand feel. If you’re considering something with wool and/or poly in it, I’d see if I could get a swatch of it to test out how it feels. Merino wool is usually pretty soft, not scratchy because of the type of wool used & the way it’s knit or assembled into cloth but it’s not as tough or durable or hard-wearing as regular (itchy) wool. You also want to scrunch the fabric up in a ball with your hands to test for wrinkle retention & wear. Plain cotton can wrinkle too which is why men’s dress shirts are going more towards the polyester (no or minimal ironing needed to keep them looking crisp, who has time to iron and/or starch them?) & away from cotton (like 100% linen, 100% cotton dress shirts get wrinkled & the wearer looks rumpled unless you iron them constantly and/or starch them)

Agree that the SWRVE shirt looks a little too ‘tactical’ probably because it’s the combo of the color (reminds me of my late father’s 70s era Army fatigues though those were not made of wool) & the styling, plus worn unbuttoned it looks like a jacket (there was a time when people who weren’t military would wear surplus fatigue jackets similar to that shirt in style) the shirt is just missing the patch pockets on either side near the front bottom hem to truly look like a jacket. Also yeah, the rip stop grid fabric is a little weird for a shirt (looks more like jacket fabric to me). Maybe in a different color (at least like the blue) it would look less obviously prepper-ish? Anything in an olive green to me screams ‘military’, navy blue, less so Also could the buttons be removed, set over a bit more towards the edge & resewn on to make the buttoned fit a little looser on you when buttoned (it’s a home ec class trick, people who sew may be able to help you do this). Bummer about the pull/flaw in the fabric, at $150, that’s so not good. The Ts & socks however are far more everyman / grey man / blend in to the rest of the world in their styling, those are all great finds!

Amazon is the king of online companies that are clueless or totally inappropriate about packing, I’m assuming it’s because employees picking & packing in their warehouses have impossibly high rate targets to meet each hour so they’ll scramble to get stuff into boxes & onto trucks. I’ve literally had a single brand new DVD (all I ordered, why did they use a box this ginormous?!?) tossed loose into a box just that size without anything else & the crushing & crumpling of it was way worse (it didn’t get torn open & miraculously the DVD & its case arrived intact, but my postal carrier with whom I’m on a 1st name basis was embarassed to be delivering that box, though I know it wasn’t his fault, we still joke about it years later now that he’s retired). This was pre-pandemic. And this was not the only time I had something from Amazon bouncing around in a way oversized box, just the most flagrant example of it. You gotta pay your workers enough to care and you can’t work them like they’re on a death march (like overscheduling them for deliveries or numbers of orders pulled & packed). Prime and faster services have been a part of the problem for years. I rarely care about fast delivery (I usually plan ahead pretty well to have my necessaries on hand & not running out and need stuff to arrive in 2/3 days at most, I don’t generally run a ‘just in time’ household, I keep a lot of ‘pantries’ of stuff I need here at home), but I care a lot about getting my stuff intact & delivered to my home as that’s what I’ve asked & paid for.

Pre-pandemic out here Amazon dumped a lot of their deliveries onto USPS, their work hours & loads were already high due to Amazon. Not sure about lately, haven’t ordered much from Amazon save from 3rd party sellers & that’s all been cheap used books which I’ve not been in a huge hurry to get (just adding more options to my home library to prep for fall & winter still at home, some of the last & least important of preps).

I have packed away in my flu pandemic supplies a small trash can of the step-on kind with a self closing lid. I also have stocked both small trash bags & larger ones, you may want to consider frequent bag changes & sickroom trash removals. Knock on wood I have yet to need to use it.

If you want a mild bright spot, as the virus hits people in rural areas & other places where up until now no one seems to know anyone who has gotten a COVID-19 infection so they’ve been lax on not gathering in groups, not keeping 6 feet apart & not wearing face coverings, they are starting to get the message but in the hard knocks personal experience kind of way. My rural area has had some people who got infected earlier than expected thanks to local poultry processing plant outbreaks & nursing home / congregate health care facilities getting slammed hard in the spring, though then it didn’t tax our meager hospital resources much (county hospital has 36 beds & just 4 ICU beds for ~42,000 people), but there was relaxation of the 3Ws in the summer & I don’t think the case load went down all that much. We’re just as vulnerable now as we were then. I wouldn’t blame you for bailing on work if there were no PPE, your specialization is the one most likely to get infected, intubating or extubating someone makes for a lot of potential droplets & aerosolized virus. As it was, I saw back in late February where CDC’s website went from stating that N-95 masks were it for approved PPE gear (probably just copy-pasted from the flu pandemic protocols for PPE) to reading the changed language to include ordinary surgical masks & well in a pinch ‘you could use a cloth bandana’. That was more than enough to make me top off my pandemic flu preps ASAP though I donated almost all my N-95s to local health care workers back then (I hear nitrile gloves are now becoming a problem, good grief!). I expect at some point people facing eviction will just stay put if things get bad enough. I doubt most law enforcement officers would put their lives or health on the line to kick them out. They have families friends & loved ones too. I worry more that if the trucks don’t roll with supplies because the pandemic gets into our trucking & transportation system and/or we have bad weather events, things could get dicey with the food supply and/or medicines & pharmaceuticals & sanitation products (can you imagine if water treatment supplies weren’t being delivered to municipal water systems?). At least we raise some food here, but we’re moving out of our growing season for produce though poultry raising is a 365 day a year thing as is milking dairy cattle. I’m glad I live in a place where most people keep pantries because the supermarkets & big box stores aren’t that close or convenient to just rush off to, we sometimes get snowed in for a few days & some people still live by the older ways of ‘putting food by’ via canning, drying, root cellaring, etc because that’s how they were raised. I cannot imagine what it’s like in a city where you can easily get in the habit of using the local restaurants as your pantry. I guess the national average pre-pandemic was ~50%+ of food consumed away from home & no more than 50% of food at most made & consumed in the home, which was why there were 2 separate food distribution systems, but they both got shocked into changing when grocery stores demand soared while the industrial food service system’s demand evaporated. And I worry about the food insecure, people’s utilities being shut off (our governor for example is mandating the power, water & sewers stay on but he let expire his emergency order covering telephone service & Internet which is how people have to fricking communicate now, especially with shut down state & local governments, which is stupid & dangerous of him, to not keep people connected to literal communication lifelines. Oh well, one day at a time here.

If you have an old-school stove top pressure cooker, that might work for grid-down cooking (like on a propane camp stove, though it might take a lot of propane to get the job done). On a stove top, the pressure cooker typically takes 30 minutes of pressure cooking if you start with once boiled dry beans Some people soak their dry beans overnight, drain them, then FREEZE them, then cook them (they then get soft in about 20 minutes of cooking) Why? Freezing makes the water absorbed by the beans expand which then breaks down some of the cellulose strands holding the bean cells together. Cooking for hours does the same for breaking down that cellulose but it’s a lot slower & potentially uses more energy. Supposedly the FASTEST way to cook dry beans is soak them over night, drain them, then freeze & then finally cook them in a pressure cooker (stove-top or electric like an Instant Pot).

I see that some of the newer Instant Pots have a sous vide setting, so if someone hasn’t bought one of these handy multi-cookers yet, it just might be worth getting one with the sous vide option

If you hate this one, you’ll despise Wise’s version of broccoli & cheese ‘whatever the heck it was I tried (I think it was a rice-based broccoli & cheese ‘casserole’ type side/dish’) even more. Mushy, processed & super salty, yuck! I’ve personally tried the Patriots ‘free’ package they hype from time to time (it was $10 in shipping) with either 48/72 hours worth of food meals & it was edible-ish. While I didn’t get a bag of plain white rice (huzzah!) the 4 small mylar pouches of food included seemed chintzy to me. As it was for a taste test, it suited its purpose, but no I wouldn’t buy from them again. Very very pricey. Quality was at best ‘meh’. Are the 4 pouches of plain white rice included in the reviewed 4 week tub meant to be served with the 4 pouches of fireside stew? I can’t tell because the website doesn’t list ingredients (a HUGE minus if you have dietary concerns to manage) but from the picture on the website, I guess that would be like pouring a stew/soup with macaroni & kidney beans already in it over white rice so maybe not? Have thought of what you could store instead (up to you to package it for longer shelf life, the Sterilite tub or 5 gallon food grade paint buckets with either the cheap snap on lids or the pricier screw on Gamma seal lids, whatever makes sense for your budget & available storage space) and if you like add oxygen adsorber packets, etc. White rice: get this at grocery store, big box discounter, could be regular white rice or that minute rice crap that’s parboiled if speed in preparation is a concern Mac & cheese: get this at grocery store, big box discounter, little boxes of instant mac & cheese or get separate dried mac noodles anywhere + tastier cheese powder in bulk online Rice & vegetable dinner: get this at grocery store, big box discounter, this looks like white rice a la Rice-A-Roni type mix with peas (dehydrated/freeze-dried) & carrot dices (dehydrated/freeze-dried) + seasoning(s), you could instead store bulk white rice, separate dehydrated (or freeze-dried) peas & separate dehydrated (or freeze-dried) carrot dices plus fixings for a basic white or cream sauce aka non-fat or whole dry milk powder + thickening agent like cornstarch or flour + whatever seasoning(s) Dinner bell broccoli bake: this looks like potato dices which are either dehydrated or freeze dried, dehydrated or freeze-dried broccoli & some kind of white/cream sauce so that’s non-fat or whole dry milk powder + thickening agent like cornstarch or flour + seasoning(s). This one you might have to get the potatoes & broccoli from another emergency food supplier like Emergency Essentials or Augason Farms then combine them. Fireside stew: this looks to me like macaroni + dried kidney beans + dehydrated/freeze-dried carrot dices + chicken (or maybe veggie?) boullion + seasoning(s). You might have to get the carrots from Emergency Essentials or Augason Farms. Buttermilk pancakes: buy pancake mix from grocery store, big box discounter, you can make & store pancake mix as well, an old but excellent book called Make A Mix Cookery by Karine Eliason has great recipes for ‘convenience food’ mixes, there’s an updated version on Amazon as a $2.99 eBook https://www.amazon.com/Make-Mix-Karine-Eliason-ebook/dp/B004ZY14HU/ Grammy’s sweet oatmeal: buy pre-sweetened / seasoned oatmeal mix from grocery store, big box discounter, possibly store instant (or regular) oatmeal + whatever flavorings & seasonings you like Vanilla pudding: buy vanilla instant pudding mix from grocery store, big box discounter, the Make a mix cookbooks may have a recipe for this too Powdered whey milk: I have seen powdered whey milk for sale online but if you’re not lactose intolerant or allergic to milk, powdered non-fat or whole dry milk could be stored, non-fat powdered milk is easy to get at any grocery store, big box discounter, whole powdered milk can be bought online Strawberry energy drink: buy an energy drink mix you like from grocery store, big box discounter or online The version of this 4 week kit I see listed today (October 30th 2020) for the same $197.00 has: America’s Finest Mac & Cheese (8)Buttermilk Pancakes (16)Creamy Rice & Vegetable Dinner (16)Dinner Bell Broccoli Bake (16)*Frank’s Favorite Alfredo (16)(this is different from what was reviewed)Fireside Stew (16)Grammy’s Sweet Oatmeal (32)*Old Fashioned Pudding (16) (chocolate pictured not vanilla)*Promised Land Powdered Milk (16)(replaces whey milk, not good if you’re lactose intolerant or allergic to milk)White Rice (32) Missing is the strawberry energy drink but you get alfredo pasta instead. For alfredo pasta: buy Rice-A-Roni type mix for alfredo pasta or buy bags of dried fettucini noodles from grocery store / big box discounter + fixings for white/cream sauce so that’s non-fat or whole dry milk powder + thickening agent like cornstarch or flour + cheese powder (buy online) + seasoning(s) Personally I think I could make an equivalent kit for between $50-$100 myself, no it wouldn’t have a ’25 year’ shelf life but properly packaged & stored it could be shelf stable for at least few years, it would be in my choice of packaging (possibly better than theirs) & I could upgrade some ingredients like better cheese powders where those are used, more seasonings & flavorings, & fewer potentially troublesome additives & preservatives.  I’m not convinced the ‘convenience’ & supposed shelf life which will be far shorter if the kit is stored in heat (like a car or an un-air-conditioned garage) or the factory packaging gets damaged of this particular emergency food kit is worth the $100+ premium to me. And I will add that in the case of some ‘mixes’ what shortens their shelf life is the life span of the ingredient that expires first (like pancake mixes, biscuit mixes, pudding mixes, etc). It’s definitely more work to make a ‘convenience’ mix closer to preparation & serving but 1) you may be able to extend the shelf life out by how you put together the mixes & food portions & 2) it definitely can be monetarily cheaper (the trade off is in your time spent making the mix yourself) and/or higher quality ingredients & therefore more palatable. I also note that in the fine print on the current webpage for this kit that the calorie portions are called ’emergency’ & come closer to 1200 calories per person per day rather than the more typical recommended 2000 calories per adult person per day the USDA & various dieticians & nutritionists recommend (USDA has a great chart that takes into account your age, gender & activity levels when you’re trying to figure out things like adequate food storage). I would think this kit would last me maybe a bit over 2 weeks (my personal RDA on calories is pretty close to the 2000/day) unless I’m doing nothing but the barest level of activity (sleeping or resting most of the day, getting up only to do the absolute minimum of daily bodily functions) And to get me to the recommended ‘normal times’ 2000 calories / day, they would want me to supplement the kit & their options again are pricey (though I think their freeze-dried / dehydrated fruit bucket is more along the lines of what I would buy from them, supplemental fruits & veggies are healthier & more nutritious, closer to the MyPyramid & MyPlate daily recommendations, those Datrex-type carb-loaded emergency food bars not so much). $100 per week buys me a pretty fancy diet in regular times (with working refrigerators, freezers, electric stove, microwave & other appliance cooking possible). I think it should go A LOT farther than on what I can see here which is heavily starches, grains & powdered dairy products (no meat, few veggies or fruits) with a smidgen of seasonings. This is like the preparedness version of SNAP/food stamp/USDA ‘Thrifty Food Plan’ version of the temporary emergency food assistance program (TEFAP), they too give out a lot of commodity starches, grains & dairy products which doesn’t fit with the more recent but also USDA nutritious food plans recommended to ALL Americans of MyPyramid (2005) or MyPlate (2015, half your plate should be fruits & vegetables whether fresh, frozen, dried, canned & without added syrup, sugar or salt). See here: https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/resource-files/TEFAP%20FAL%20FY21%20Final.pdf I just don’t think this is a good food choice in a pandemic where the emergency is literally already a threat to your health, 2 weeks of this diet (or more if you try & stretch it out) alone could make you sick by itself & more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, not less. My vote on this kit is a definite ‘no’, either make this kit yourself cheaper, or choose something else from the emergency food / prepper food suppliers. I second others recommendations for the Mormon / LDS food storage plan as modified to suit individual needs (for example, you can’t store all those wheat berries if you have issues with gluten) or get with the Old Order Amish / Mennonites who also store a lot of food but it generally has to be more shelf stable because they avoid being connected to electrical grids, their cookbooks like More With Less by Doris Jantzen Longacre https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Cookbook-World-Community/dp/083619263X/ and The Basics & More by Virginia & Elsie Hoover https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Cookbook-Virginia-Elsie-Hoover/dp/0971845638/ are fantastic resources for simpler cooking. Peggy Layton in the Mormon LDS community published a lot of books on stored food recipes (like beans & rice, potatoes including the very popular ‘funeral potatoes’, dried eggs, etc) search for those on Amazon & other book selling sites if you opt to go the more old school storage ways, they’re very good resources as well.

DE or diatomaceous earth helps with the tiny buggy pests that can get into your dried foods, feast on them & ruin them. Also be sure whatever packaging you use is rodent proof (the 5 gallon plastic paint buckets & their snap onlids or the fancier screw on-screw off Gamma seal lids are rodent proof as well) If a bucket has a 2 in a triangle it’s food grade plastic.

I second the recommendation for Saco buttermilk so long as it’s going into baking (not so great reconstituted & drunk all by itself in my experience though)

Isn’t EE now beprepared.com?

I have only taste-tested Wise (crazy salty & ‘processed’, their rice dishes had the texture of mushy cooked oatmeal, yuck!) & Patriot Pantry (edible but nothing special). I have tried some of the Mountain House stuff when out backpack camping with a friend many years ago. I recall them being okay but my friend tweaked them because like me she knows how to cook reasonably well. I would consider MH depending on what the pre-made meals are like. I’ve not tried the other brands because most of the other makers don’t have sample packs available to try. I think if I’m going to spend $100+++ on stored emergency food, surely I should be able to try a 2-3 day sample (ie 48 – 72 hours) for $20.00 or less. The Wise stuff I got from one of their many affiliate reps for free (I hated to give him the bad review but what I tried was terrible), the Patriot Pantry has a 2/3 day pack you can get for the shipping cost (~$10.00). Neither came in super durable packaging like plastic buckets (just non-reusable mylar foil pouches) but that’s the point of the sample food: to prepare & taste it before making a substantial investment in weeks, months or years worth of food. Personally since I can cook, I went with a lot of freeze dried & dehydrated/dried components which I can make up into meals myself (many lightweight backpack campers do this). Yes that isn’t the same as ‘just adding boiled water & waiting up to 20 minutes’ then voila! a ‘meal’!, but I wouldn’t store more than a few weeks of the pre-made just add boiled water meals even if I was deathly ill. I also have more local sources that don’t pack things to last for 10, 20 or 30 years, but they do sell freeze dried & dehydrated fruits & vegetables more akin to the add-on fruit bucket of Patriot Pantry (Augason Farms also had one of those multi variety fruit buckets as well as a veggie bucket). The nice thing about them is getting free or cheap samples to try which led me to order big time from them & in quantities I know I would like (For example, I ordered heavy on freeze-dried mushrooms because I love them, though others might not, but I skipped freeze-dried corn because it doesn’t agree with me) This small local company is aware their customers can & sometimes do repackage their food (it comes shipped in either mylar ziploc bags or in small plastic screw top containers, bulk sizes are often available if you request them, it stores fine for 1-2 years as packaged & shipped) for even longer term storage (for this purpose you can buy little oxygen adsorber packets, buckets with Gamma seal lids etc, vacuum packing into either mylar foil bags and or the seal a meal type plastic bags, using a heat sealer to close either type of bag, etc). The thing is since I regularly use these (& have for a few years now), I get my fruits & veggies in a long life form (most are freeze-dried I prefer this to dehydrated, but some things only come dehydrated & that’s usually workable) & I’m not tossing out or composting rotting fresh produce as much or feeling the dire need to go to the grocery store when I run low or out. And it’s easy to repackage for longer storage grains like rice or oats or flour from the supermarket or big box discounter, as well as spices, cooking oils, etc. Meat can be tricky, but there are options out there. I’m currently experimenting around with dried / powdered dairy & eggs, like all this some are great, some okay, some awful. For the future I’m budgeting for my own freeze-dryer so I can preserve my own garden produce or stuff bought locally (I live in a rural food-growing area, from spring to fall we have farmers markets, CSAs, pick your own places, bulk produce auctions, etc). I already have both a water bath canner & a pressure canner &  several shelves of jars & lids etc, but the freeze dryer looks like a great way to put more home grown foods by in less space & with less weight, etc. Food grade plastic buckets are cheap & less breakable than glass canning jars, Gamma seal lids make them convenient to use. My way is a bit more DIY, but I appreciate that someone went to the trouble to review the less DIY less work ’emergency’ meal options out there. But my take-home is try before you buy if you can, then only store what you will eat & actually eat what you store.

I wonder if the yogurt setting on an Instant-Pot would be helpful in making sour cream? Most Instant-Pots or similar multi-cookers come with a yogurt making setting. If you have a whole fat yogurt on hand you can make a cream cheese out of it (there are very fine mesh plastic filter funnels out there just for this purpose) that strain out the excess water / liquid whey. A store bought plain whole milk or plain Greek yogurt works to make yogurt cream cheese, I would think home-made high fat yogurt would make excellent & tasty yogurt cream cheese (no additives)